writing

“I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours for…what?”

I was listening to a podcast today and this “old saying” stopped me in my tracks.

Well, the big, juicy melted piece of gum I stepped in while I was listening and traversing the parking lot at Target actually DID stop me in my tracks. A stop so dead—I walked right out of my shoe.

I kid you not.

Seeing that we are deep into December, I had to park so far away that the actual Target store was just a speck on the horizon. I’m sure someone left their gum, like a bread crumb, to mark the trail back to their car so…I can’t really be mad, can I?
But enough about my glamourous life.

Back to the saying. You know, the myth that implies that there are more than enough hours in a day.

You work eight hours.
Stop laughing.
I know we’re smack dab in the middle of the holidays and what with shopping and wrapping and all—the Elves up at the North Pole have a shorter work day. And better benefits. And terrific catering. Nevermind.

So… you work.

Anyhow, you sleep eight hours. But seriously, who does? I’m lucky to get seven. This morning I woke up at 3 am because I thought I saw an orange glow down the hall and knew for sure the tree was on fire.
It wasn’t.

Too late, adreneline rushes don’t keep regular office hours.

Then I couldn’t remember all of the reindeer names or get that damn song out of my head.
I lay there wondering where on earth my pine nut cookie recipe went and the next thing I knew it was 4am and all I could think about was how good coffee would taste with a pine nut cookie—so I got up and made some. Coffee. Not the cookies. I’m still at a loss.

So…You sleep.

But you guys, that still leaves at least several, maybe four, hours left to do whatever you want.

My friend says those hours are reserved for worrying.
Yikes.
My hubby says traffic on the 101 freeway chews up his spare time.
Jeepers, people.

What about eating?
Sex anybody?
Holiday merriment?

I decided to paint with a broad brush.
“I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours left for… FUN!”

That sounds downright illegal, doesn’t it? Fun? Really? And for eight hours? Oh, sweet Jesus, help me!

But fun can be anything, right?

A glass of pink champagne for no reason?

Maybe it’s staying up after everybody else goes to bed to binge watch Netflix.

What about going out to lunch and catching up with an old friend?

Today, my friend Kim and I played hookie and went to see a movie—in the middle of the day!

How would you complete that sentence? Gimme some hints, I’d love to know.

Carry on,
xox

“Oh, the heartbreakingly beautiful tender weight of being human.” ~ Unknown

I’m tender-hearted.

Truly.

I know I may seem pretty cold-hearted sometimes, but I can be brought to tears by a beer commercial with big horses and dogs. And carols. Oh Holy Night or that incredible duet by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli —that one slays me.

So, yeah. I cry easy. Especially at Christmas.

A “friend” sent me a story with the video of a Santa who was granting a terminally ill little boy’s wish to talk to him only to have the boy whisper at the end of their visit, “Santa, can you help me?” and then die right there in the bearded mans arms.  The man is undone as he weeps through the telling of the story.

Well! That was the cruelest of Yuletide acts so of course I was forced to rip up her Christmas card and eat the fudge I made her.

I will not post it here because it really is THAT sad, but if you need to see it with your own eyes it is currently doing the rounds on Facebook where I have had to do the equivalent of running past it for the past week lest I cry my eyelashes off.

But you’re not getting off that easy. I saw this video and just had to share it with you guys. It is the epitome of the Christmas spirit and that’s all I’m going to say. Except…

I was shocked.

I was touched.

I cried and then I wondered what Oprah,  I would have done in the same situation at the same age.

https://www.facebook.com/unbelievable.wow/videos/289671704767444/

What do YOU think?

Carry on my people,
xox

The energy was a bit frantic this weekend and it carried into Monday.

After all, It’s mid December.

I hiked, had some Facetimes with two of my tribe members whom I love, and then before I started gnawing on own arm I decided to make myself something to eat. These days I’ve been preparing a lovely riced cauliflower dish which I convince myself through the power of my mind and copious amounts of butter, salt and pepper, is perfectly steamed jasmine rice.

Some days it tastes like a big carb cheat. Most days it does not. It tastes like sock drawer lint covered in butter, salt and pepper.

I’m doing this during December because I just so happen to have the ingredients for Toll House chocolate chip cookies in the house and so I consider myself armed and dangerous. Dozens of cookies could be baked at a moments notice so I feel better eating them knowing I had something bland, tasteless, and carb free for lunch.

So you can imagine my horror when I opened the butter dish only to find a sliver of butter left behind and none in the fridge. This sliver should have never been left there. It was barely enough to butter one piece of toast. The culprit, and I’m not naming names, but his initials are RB, should have just used it up and left out the empty butter dish so I would have bought butter when I was out shopping, oh, I don’t know, every day this past weekend.

Anyway, I has just enough time to run to the market to fetch some butter for my lint before my friend Kim was due to arrive, AND I had on the appropriate clothing. I have been known to run to the market for a stray ingredient (not big grocery shopping mind you), in whatever I have on in the moment. Pajama bottoms, a stained sweatshirt and flip-flops, shorts, no bra and Uggs to name a few examples. It’s like I’m running out to the garage, not a public place. So…if you ever see me—I apologize in advance.

Today I had on real pants…a bra…and some proper shoes. This is worth mentioning.

So, I raced to our nearby Ralphs, grabbed a butter (salted, of course), and finally, finally, several poinsettia plants that did’t look as if they’d fallen off the back of the truck. I checked myself out at the Self Checkout (because I am so fast it’s not even fair), ran back to my car in a very crowded and chaotic December parking lot and unloaded my one bag while an SUV waited patiently for my primo spot.

In my rush to expedite the entire process and because I was pressured by that freaking SUV, I took my purse out of the cart and put it down in the back so I could maneuver the dog cushions and a rogue rug I’ve been driving around with for the past day or so.

Hey! The poinsettias were delicate and they needed breathing room!

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was shutting the back when I was finished.
As I flashed a quick smile and an I’m going as fast as I can hand wave (sans the middle finger in case you were wondering), to the waiting SUV, my smile was instantly replaced by the taste of vomit when I realized the back tail gate had just clicked shut and LOCKED itself—with my purse inside.

The last time I locked my keys in the car was…NEVER. I have never locked my keys in the car.

I have one of those new fangled cars that works without keys. It has a push button ignition and the doors will lock and unlock and it will start as long as the key is close enough to smell. I’ve tried to lock it many, many, many times with my purse still in the back seat and the doors refuse to lock. It is smarter than me. It knows things. Yet, somehow the same rules don’t apply to the back of the station wagon.

You know how I know that? BECAUSE I COULDN’T OPEN THE F*CKING CAR!

At least I had my phone in my pocket, so I called my husband who, when he was done laughing, said this:

Me: I locked my purse in the way back of the car.
Husband: How?…Never mind. Looks like you have a walk home ahead of you.
Me: Of course! I can walk home and get the other key! It’s a fifteen minute walk. That’s genius!
Husband: I know. Between the two of us we have one brain that’s firing on all cylinders.
Me: Right?
Husband: Gotta go. I hope I haven’t used my one great idea for the day.

As you can imagine, the SUV lady was NOT happy when I mimed I locked my keys in the car accompanied by the universal forehead slap and the Doh shrug.

So, off I went a walkin’.

This was the perfect opportunity to slow down. Something I decided to embrace. I also decided to pay attention. This was my quaint little neighbor hood that I usually race thru at fifty miles an hour. Walking at a decent clip the first thing I noticed were all of the changing leaves. My God! It’s SoCal, not New England, I get that, but still! Look at this!

One thing I could not avoid noticing was all of the smeared poop on the sidewalk. It was like avoiding land mines and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the result of one incontinent canine or that the dog walking people in my neighborhood are seriously THAT rude.

My neighboorhood has real holiday spirit. What I hadn’t noticed before were all of the holiday wreaths. Every single door has a wreath of some kind. Even some gates and garages have wreaths. I even spotted one on the front of a truck. Some of the old-fashioned lamp posts in the neighborhood are wrapped with ribbon and many a mailbox is tied with a bow. Is that a thing? Putting a big red bow on your mailbox? I saw so many, I think it’s a thing.

Something else that was really surprising were all of the phallices drawn in chalk on the sidewalk. I’m serious. I counted five. Is there a band of depraved, sexually precocious six-year olds wandering our neighborhood drawing dicks in colored chalk? Or is this Pompeii? I’m still scratching my head on that one.

By the time I got the spare key and started to walk back it was starting to drizzle. Not enough to get wet. Just enough to frizz my hair into a giant gray afro. Terrifying. But I was glad I had on pants and real shoes because, you know, weather.

After my half an hour walking tour of the neighborhood I have to tell you I was never so happy to pull into my driveway—in my car. The sheer gratitude I felt for reliable transportation and for my swell little neighborhood was barely overshadowed by the fact that sitting happily in the driveway, admiring the white lights of the tree glittering through the window, I suddenly realized I’d left my Christmas tree on the entire time I was gone.

I need to slow down. How about you?
Carry on,
xox

Hi Guys,
Meet my dear friends Kim and Sandra O’Donnell. They are a very brave couple. They married within a few months of meeting, he left a business, she started one, then they left Kim’s family home in California to move to Sandra’s home state of Alabama to be near her family.

So the least I could do was write about the fact that poinsettias upset me and send it to them because I am so far out of their league I can only hope to illicit their sympathy…and yours.
Please check out their Magazine, it’s awesome.

http://www.huntsvillelifemagazine.com/single-post/2016/12/08/A-FEW-WORDS-ABOUT-POINSETTIAS

I have a very complicated relationship with the holidays and their prerequisite decoration requirements, most particularly, the Poinsettia plant. Some people call it a flower but really, is it a flower? It seems fairly obvious to me that it is a green plant that has the ability, once a year, for our enjoyment, to turn its leaves red.

I find that to be an amazingly unselfish contribution to the holiday season which I can appreciate, so that being said, I cannot pass up a good poinsettia…or five. And therein lies the complication.

They are not an inexpensive obsession.

I need several, and by several I mean many of the medium plants, most which sell for around $5.99 to $7.99 a pot. My need for them is nonnegotiable if I want to put together a proper centerpiece or decorate an entrance. Don’t even get me started on the giant ones which I LOVE—because they are gorgeous. They can be as much as $25-$30 at a swanky nursery, upscale farmer’s market or florist in the city.

Granted, you can find them cheaper at certain grocery stores, (you know which ones I’m talking about) but they are the text-book case of “you get what you pay for.” Pathetic is the word that comes to mind when I think of them. They are the Tiny Tim’s of poinsettia plants. They are generally minuscule, dry and scrawny, with broken leaves, which these plants can’t afford because of their inherent sparseness.

After feeling the appropriate amount of pity I turn around, suck it up, and pay my eight dollars.

Here’s the thing. I have been buying poinsettias at Christmastime for well over forty years. I figure I pick up at least six to ten of them at eight dollars a plant. I am ashamed to admit I also buy at least three of the large, lush and perfectly crimson red thirty-dollar-a-pop plants each year so that makes almost fifteen poinsettias and that doesn’t count the replacement ones I buy after the ones I purchase right after Thanksgiving wilt and die by the second week of December. And you can just forget about all of those years we held Christmas Eve at our house. There was veritable red sea of Poinsettia plants as far as the eye could see. And not the Tiny Tim’s, the big, expensive guys.

I know you’re all with me. I see you with your plants at the check-out counter where we all size up each others choices and swallow our shame.

I sooth my guilt this way: Poinsettias are like buying into those expensive but strictly frivolous kitchen gadgets, like a super-duper vegetable juicer or a fancy food dehydrator. You convince yourself you must have them. You NEED them. Then after a couple of weeks you curse yourself for being such gullible idiot and get rid of them only to find yourself a year later forgetting why you hated them and doing it all over again.

So… you can do the math. I have spent a small fortune on seasonal plants that every year I promise myself I will nurture and use again the following year but in truth I once spotted a poinsettia plant in a friend’s garden in July. It felt like an aberration. Nope. I will continue to squander my money for the next three weeks and I justify it by deeming poinsettias necessary and calling them festive. To me, they signal the start of the holidays.

But let me be blunt. Had I not been bamboozled year after year by this nefarious plant/flower I would own a small island in the Bahama’s next to Johnny Depp’s or a diamond the size of my head.

Happy Holidays

A classic, Janet, Holiday rant.
I’m guessing you can relate.
Live long and prosper.
xox

We are now entering the second week of December. That triggers a hot mess of mixed emotions inside of me.
Every. Single. Year.

Listen, don’t get me wrong, I love all things Christmas, but can we please move it to May?

When I see THAT date—December 1st—I can’t help it—my butt puckers.

As the month progresses I secretly want to strangle December. I want to take it around back and teach it a lesson.

Show of hands, who’s with me? Who here in readerville secretly hates December?

Who thought that thirty consecutive days of extreme holiday stress was a good idea? Target? Santa? The devil?

By the end of week one, I’m consumed by that sinking feeling that lets me know—I’m already behind schedule.

I’m already late with my shipping.
Once I navigate the Post Office parking lot, or as I like to call it, December Demolition Derby (I once backed up and ONTO an Audi, a brand new one—my trailer hitch opening up the front hood of that car like a can opener), I have to stand in line and wait for the TWO postal clerks behind the counter to wade their way through all the other holiday shippers.

There is yelling. There are lies, bribes and cutting in line. There are tears. And that’s just me.

Once I work up the stamina (facilitated by devouring all of the fudge I made the previous night) to take on the Christmas tree shopping—usually reserving December 10th for my tree excursion—all of the good ones are gone.

By the second week of December! That is just criminal.

Last year they had a Charlie Brown section for people like me. Dried up weak and feeble trees that were already dead—pitifully begging for a home. Those are what’s left for us mid-December stragglers. The ones who wait so they don’t have to fight the crowds and crying kids the first two weeks.

Get this: I drove past a lot the other day where they were flocking trees. Remember flocking? Crispy, fake snow? I thought I’d passed through a time warp except for the crowd. There was a crowd of bearded hipsters with man-buns all milling around the tent inhaling crispy snow and sipping artisan hot chocolate.

Are hipsters bringing flocking back? Is that a thing again?

Are you freaking kidding me? If those hipsters had lived through the sixties like I had, they would NEVER in a million years have the slightest inclination to re-create it. I still have rotating color-wheel flashbacks.

Once I got my Christmas investment (they are well over ten bucks a foot) home, it took me three tries to get the white twinkle lights to do the one thing they were designed to do—light up. We sent men to the moon and wtf?… If you so much as look at a strand cross-eyed HALF of it will go dark.

But only half.

Which leaves me filled with hope, because December marks a season of hope, right? Hope that I can find the rat bastard loose bulb, tap it gently, twist it, or God willing, replace it with the extra one taped to the cord, and have the freaking tree lit by New Years.

THAT has never happened. In all of my years lighting a tree I’ve yet to twist a loose bulb and have the thing light back up.

That is an urban myth. Worse yet, it’s a fairy tale told to unsuspecting Christmas revelers in order to fill them with false hope.
That’s not playing fair. Jesus would frown on that.

In search of lights that worked I was forced to do what you’re never supposed to do the entire month of December if you have a brain in your head and one ounce of common sense left in your body——I went to Target yesterday and they were already out of white lights AND wrapping paper. It’s the first week of December people. Seriously?

In the parking lot, I nearly got sideswiped by an SUV wearing blinking antlers. Am I insured for that?

Baking. Let’s talk holiday baking. I love to bake.
I love it so much I only do it once a year in December, otherwise, I would be HUGE.
Like, walk me down Central Park West in the Thanksgiving Day Parade huge.
Because my love for baking is only exceeded by my love of eating what I bake.

What? You don’t do that? I call bullshit. Sure you do! Because it’s only logical. Artists love art. Singers love music. Bakers love all things warm and gooey. They love it so much they make it themselves—for themselves. Between eating the raw cookie dough and “quality testing” the finished products my friends are lucky to get a bite in edgewise.

December is also a month of wonder.
I wonder every year which of my favorite childhood ornaments will fall prey to the floor-gods. They are insatiable and unrelenting in their search for a sacrifice. I’m aware of this, so in order to keep the emotional carnage to a minimum I put the ones I don’t care as much about near the floor, as an offering. A token of respect. Then I padlock my favorite treasures safely inside the middle branches. But the floor gods always prevail. Last night the ice-skater I received when I was eleven mysteriously appeared on the hardwood floor under the tree. She wasn’t broken broken. Just her left ankle and skate are missing.

But her career is over. There go her hopes of a medal.

I had a good cry. SHE took it with grace and dignity so I re-hung her in the front of the tree as an example of Christmas courage.

Listen, how about those Christmas cards?
All year long I’m lulled into complacency, thinking I have several great shots for the front of a card. Then it comes time to send them in to get printed. Either I’m late for the “print by” date because for some reason I’m unable to fathom why on earth that date is August 31st, and I’m too busy eating watermelon BECAUSE IT’S SUMMER—or I can’t find the pictures.

They’re missing. Gone. Non-existent. A figment of my overactive imagination.

I could make do with the one from last year. The one where he’s squinting, my smile is jinky and the dog has wild eyes and a grin like Cujo. Oh, fuck it. Just never mind. It’ll just have to wait until next year. Again.

I do love receiving all the cards from friends and family. I really do. I adore being able to see how much the kids have grown every year but can I ask you a favor? Please don’t send me the three-page newsletters. That’s okay. I’m all caught up. That’s what Facebook is for. Besides, they’re primarily filled with bad news. The death of a pet, Uncle Frank’s broken hip, the baby that can’t say please. Are you kidding? Has no one any good news to share?

The last one I read was like a Charles Dickens novel. It was filled with so much tragedy I had to read it with a box of Kleenex (and Sees candy) and a glass of scotch. Honestly! I know nothing says Christmas like death and job loss, but can we all agree to just cut-it-out?

December. What is it with you?
You drive me nuts! You are like the bat-shit crazy relative everyone hates that keeps showing up drunk every year!

As much as I vow that this year will be different,
I eat too much.
I spend too much.
I drink too much.
I argue way too much.
I don’t get enough rest.
I over commit.
I cry.
And I lose my patience.

Which brings me to the realization—December, you are a little bit like childbirth. You are miserable and painful in the moment but after some time has passed (like 365 days) I forget and repeat all the madness because when I look back on the holidays you brought me miracles and filled me with wonder and THAT my friend,makes you impossible to hate.

Happy Holidays Y’all!
xox

“What if you saw your life from beginning to end, would you change anything?”~ The movie Arrival

Besides placing my little baby self with the perfect set of parents, on the beach, in Malibu, while being fed organic, gluten-free, free-range apple sauce by a giant silver spoon…

…I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But if I’m being truthful here, which I always try to be, I’m sure I’d take out my pair of big, sharp scissors and edit out all the painful parts.

The places where I didn’t get the part. Or the job. Or the boy I wanted more than a dish of really melty chocolate ice cream.

Where I was embarrassed. Sad. Ruefully disappointed. Or ashamed of myself. Yeah, I’d cut out those parts too, because, hey, nobody would miss them—least of all me.

And lets not forget the times where my heart got broken.

Where my chest hurt so much it felt like I’d recently had open heart surgery. Only to figure out later that the pain came from the exact opposite—the force of the slam. You can all relate to the force of the slam, right? Where you’re sailing along, all open-hearted (la, la, la, la, la), and somebody you love, respect and admire betrays you?

Or somebody dies.

First you hear the creaking of the hinges, because, hey, your heart is flung WIDE OPEN. This closing up tight thing will take a minute.

Then comes the slam. SLAM!! It batons down all of your hatches, locks every single rusty lock (and there are a shit-ton of locks, more locks than your average Manhattan walk up)…and installs a moat.

NOBODY is getting in there anytime soon. Am I right?

So, yeah, I’d say it would probably be in my best interest and the interest of love in general if I just cut out all of that messy shit —and pretend like it never happened.

But we all know we aren’t able to alter those things. I’m thinking of starting a “Go Fund Me” page to get that changed. Who’s with me?

Think about it though. Would you wipe out all of the people you’ve loved and lost? Just delete them from your script?
That would change so much. I don’t know if I’d be willing to do that. Because in hindsight each situation had an effect on another, kinda like the butterfly effect. In other words, it would fuck everything up.

Things we can”t even imagine. Things out of our purview.Things that are above our pay grade to even comprehend.

Didn’t not getting some of those things make you better? Stronger? Savvier? Funnier? And smarter?

Yeah… me neither.

In all seriousness. All of those things that felt like big, fat, obvious mistakes were like rocks in a stream, each one causing the path of the water to shift, which may have held us under, choking and spitting and gasping for air…until something (the fickle finger of fate?) grabbed us by our wet bathing suits, gave us a wedgie and led us to where we stand right. this. minute.

If I saw that in a life overview I’d probably laugh my ass off. Wouldn’t you?
And I probably wouldn’t change one goddamn thing. Would you?

Carry on,
xox

Just your average, giggly, pink champagne lunch. With fries, duh.

Once there was a very wise and funny woman who absolutely LOVED pink champagne. I already adored her but upon hearing that fact, well, it made me love her even more.

Why, you ask?

Because in my opinion pink champagne is the friendlier, less pretentious, girlier (don’t get all feminist on me, I mean this in the best way) sister of regular champagne. It’s fun. It’s the poodle skirt of champagnes.
It giggles. It twirls. It charms and delights.

Anyhow, The other day, after listening to one of her books on audible, read by her, I became nostalgic. “Show me a sign that you’re still around” I asked her politely. Less than an hour later I was offered, out of the blue, a glass of pink champagne.

I relayed this bit of magic to a darling and dear friend of mine who is currently going through a rough patch. “Isn’t that magical?” I said. We both agreed that my wise pink champagne loving mentor should help her through this…rough patch.
We did that by nodding dreamily in unison over FaceTime.

This same friend told me she was looking for a house. Not just any house. A start over house.

She has intended with a heart full of love to reinvent her life. And it’s a good time to do so since the life she’s leaving behind is kinda in a…well…rough patch. If you were to take a snapshot of her life—in this moment—it would not look good on paper. But, seriously, we’ve all been there at one time or another, right?

One. Tiny. Detail remained. You know what new houses require? That you look amazing on paper.

Meh. No problem.

She decided, since she was doing that reinventing thingy, to really commit. So she scanned the internet for a house to rent using NO FILTERS.

Have you ever done ANY search with no filters? Terrifying. Exactly.

It’s amazing how many filters we run our lives through. Financial. Emotional. Rational. But that’s an essay for another day.

After a while, lo and behold, the perfect house popped up. Perfect in every way. Size, decor, location. all except for the price. Did that deter our intrepid heroine?

Hell to the NO!

She made an appointment to meet with the realtor who was surprisingly underwhelmed by my friend’s less than stellar financials. “Just as long as you don’t have a dog” she laughed.

“Oh, I have a dog. But just a small one”, my friend replied.
“Huh. I’ll have to talk to the owners” was the real estate woman’s response.

Gee, that doesn’t sound like a no, my brave friend thought on her way home.

When the wife of the couple who own the house met her dog later that week the dog behaved like the docile, well-behaved pup she is NOT—and the wife fell in love. “Of course you can have your dog”, she gushed in that baby talk that dogs find disgusting.

This is the part of the story where I tell her about the pink champagne magic. Cue the tandem sigh…

Not ten minutes later she texted me this picture of a random fridge in her random writing hub.

We both screamed a little. Well, honestly, we screamed a LOT!  WTF! Pink champagne!

“You are SO getting this house!” I declared. We were giddy for another ten, fifteen minutes, half hour and when we hung up I went and bought a bottle of pink champagne because when magic knocks on the door—you answer!

On my way home my wise dead friend from the beginning of the story took this whole champagne tale a step further.
“There is more to this. It goes deeper” she said. “What does champagne signify, Janet?”

After turning down the christmas carols in the car and thinking for a minute I got it. “Celebration!” I yelled like a gameshow contestant.

“Exactly”, she affirmed. “Why do you think I chose pink champagne as my sign to you guys that I’m around?”

“Because you love…” I barely got the thought out.

“Besides that. I could have chosen a myriad of things that would have let you know. So why pink champagne for your friend?”

It suddenly became so obvious to me, and you guys are so much smarter than I am you’ve probably already figured it out.

“Because she’s going to celebrate getting the house!”

“Exactly”, she said with a smile in her voice. “And you’re going to have something to celebrate soon too. Let’s not forget who got the pink champagne first.”

Holy F*ck.

“This is what happens when your future informs your present”, she dropped like a bomb at my feet.

—but that’s an essay for another day…

I invite you to look everywhere for pink champagne.

Cheers,
xox

The best part of this video is watching Jason giggle like an eight year old boy and then break into some Latin (like you do), while discussing The Kiss.

So, tell me, why do people kiss each other? Haven’t you asked yourself that question?
I have.

I remember a long time ago reading somewhere, I think relating to Kabbalah (an ancient and mystical form of Judaism), the high regard with which they held a kiss. They consider it a sacred act. It is an act so intimate that you are virtually “sharing” the breath of another person.

Knowing that marked me.

Today, the most widely accepted theory of kissing is that we humans do it because it helps us sniff out a quality mate. When our faces are close together, our pheromones “talk” – exchanging biological information about whether or not two people will make strong offspring.

Well, that’s just not sexy.

Here are some other fun facts I found:

Do any other animals kiss?
Save for the bonobos that suck on each other’s tongues for up to ten minutes at a time, there aren’t any animals that kiss. And are we really going to count a tongue-suck as a kiss anyway? Somehow, humans are actually the only species to kiss on the mouth, and the meanings of a kiss are plentiful.

Why do they call it a French kiss?
The term ‘French kiss’ – once also called a ‘Florentine kiss’ – is popularly considered to have been brought back to the English-speaking world by soldiers returning from Europe after World War I. At the time, the French had a reputation for more adventurous sexual practices, and so it happened that these soldiers returned to their sweethearts with some newly acquired “skills”.

That being said, with decades of dating under my belt, I became a bit of a connoisseur regarding kissing. There is a Goldilocks zone where kissing is concerned. I’m sure you’ll all agree with me on the fact that a bad kisser can kill even the best chemistry.

No tight, dry “butt pucker” lips.

No overly moist delivery that makes you want to wipe your face with the sleeve of your jacket.

No wide open “shark mouth” where your teeth bang together.

And my least favorite, the wild tongue thrusting where it feels like they’re looking for their car keys somewhere around your tonsils.

Ah, the kiss. Done well it makes me giggle and speak Latin too—how about you?

Carry on,
xox

I should be ashamed I love these things. But I’m not.

Not really. I suppose I should be because they’re not the usual suspects like spring in Paris, babies and puppies but hey, how boring would that be? We all love those things.

No, these are specific to my twisted brain. What I feel the least bit of a tinge of shame over is the ferocity with which I love these things. It’s the way I love them. The love is mad and runs deep. So, even though I know you weren’t wondering, without further ado, here they are:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches. And not just any grilled cheese sandwich. It has to be just so. The trick is to use nice, thick bread and then butter and grill both sides. If that much butter bothers you order a salad instead and by-the-way, I don’t think we can be friends.
2. Words. Well, certain words like, pomplemousse, inert, tiddlywinks and hippopotamuses. I like the way they make my mouth feel when I say them.
3. Homemade croutons. Made from stale sourdough or better yet, brioche bread.
4. False eyelashes. (No secret there.)
5. The very rare natural redhead with brown eyes. My niece is one and people literally fall all over themselves staring at her hair. I had blue eyes (still do) when my hair was dyed red—so yeah, I was batting zero for two.
6. Pink champagne. Does this need an explanation? It shouldn’t. It’s magic.
7. Straws in my drinks. No umbrellas and please, no plastic monkeys (okay, just one).
8. Hikes with trees. Like a forest hike, not those dirt trails where there’s no shade and the terrain resembles Death Valley.
9. Science Fiction ANYTHING. Movie, book, TV show, it doesn’t matter.  I repeatedly tell my husband that in my next life I’m coming back as an astronaut/archeologist/deep space explorer. I’m pretty sure that won’t be for a while since I don’t want anything to do with our current space program. I want to be on a ship with gravity. Where I can run around, not need money and replicate whatever my little space exploring heart desires. So, see ya in 3033.
10. The chinese chicken salad at Joan’s on Third. There is only one that is better. My mom’s. Hi mom.
11. Jeans. Don’t you love jeans? I just love that I live in a day and age where pantyhose are no longer required and if they’re not faded and you wear them with a black jacket and nice shoes, you can get away with jeans almost anywhere. Except maybe a funeral. Wear a black dress or real pants to a funeral. Show some respect.
12. The chocolate pie my friend Ginger made for my birthday. ( Are you sensing my love affair with food?) She made two and we had a least one piece a day for my entire stay. I didn’t ask for the recipe because I’d like to fit in one airline seat the next time I fly.
13. Flashmobs. I will scream and cry if I ever see one in person. They make me crazy! You can surprise me with one anytime.
14. Nora Ephron movies. My favorite is You’ve Got Mail, but I also adore Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Michael, Silkwood, Julie And Julia and…

So…what do you love with a fiery intensity that you might never admit except here, as an anonymous reader in front of tens of  my other readers?

Carry on,
xox

Hey you guys,
Digging around in my “dead drafts” file I came across this stream of consciousness, shitty first draft of an actual event that happened to me last year at this time. Since it’s a year old I suppose it’s a Throwback for a Thursday. Right? And since I know most of you, no, make that all of you, have loved and lost, I thought I’d share this unabridged account of just how much I suck at it. Loss that is. So here goes. 

Carry on,
xox

I wish more than anything that I had a profound and pithy quote befitting this story, instead, all you get is:

“Omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,breathe.”~ Me

I heard his voice again last night. For the first time in thirty years.

This is a voice I would have given my left tit to hear back then, back in the days and months after our break-up in 1986.

Truthfully? I would have sold my soul, my car and my beloved cat to hear him say my name in that seductive way he had.

Just one… More…Time.

Shameless doesn’t adequately describe me.

Neither, do I have enough fingers or toes to count the number of times I sold-myself-out emotionally.

I would call, he would answer and I would hang up. Or, I would get his out-going message on his answer machine and since I knew he wasn’t home (he was never home), I would call back and listen to it ten to fifteen times in a row with the intensity of a FBI voice analysis expert, searching for any small hint in the tone, or the words that he used as a clue to his state of mind.

Was he happier without me? Or did he sound like wads of Kleenex were shoved up his nostrils, his heart-broken into tiny pieces that were scattered across the globe by the wind—like me?

Mostly I did it because second only to his smell, I desperately ached for the sound of his voice. That along with a longing for reentry back into his inner circle from which I’d been banished.

He was the drug and I was the addict.
He was the tall, cool drink of water. I was dying of thirst.
He was the Sun, and whatever small ray of attention he chose to shine on me, like a sunflower I reached up and reveled in it.
He threw his scraps of attention to my bruised and broken heart as I rolled around in the dirt like a feral animal, begging for more.

You get the picture. Shameless.

It had to be enough—but it never was.
Because that’s the thing about that kind of love. The always evident, finite nature of it, creates mental insatiability.

From the beginning, the deep tone of his voice could magically make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Like a musical instrument, my body was specifically tuned to him–it had a visceral reaction—every cell vibrating with desire.
It was crazy. At nearly thirty years old I’d never felt anything like it.

My love for him felt crazy. So, I began to mistake feeling crazy—for love.

It culminated in a real eye-opener when I jumped out of a second-story window and chased his car down the street. In that moment it turned dangerous crazy. Stupid. Untethered to reality.

At no time was I aware how unsustainable that kind of love, lust, obsession was.
Nothing that burns that hot can survive as it consumes everything it touches. It must flame out. It must. Even volcanoes go dormant.

I thought I would never get over him. The mere mention of his name could send me to bed sobbing for hours.
The pain was simply unbearable.

In order to function in the world, I put myself into an emotional rehab of sorts. I removed all signs of him from my immediate surroundings. First I got rid of all the gifts he gave me. An 80’s abstract patterned sweatshirt, a small, carved jewelry box. Then I took the pictures of him out of their frames. Well, to be honest, for years I left them in the frames and covered them with more current shots of friends and family in the hopes that this was all just a bad dream and we would eventually reconcile and I could put our pictures front and center once again.

Slowly, I erased all of his saved voice messages. They were like the tiny airline bottles of booze alcoholics save in case of an emotional ”emergency”. A quick fix. A masochistic game. A rush followed by the pitiful groan of my heart as it dropped like a piano from a fifty story building. Over, and over, and over again.

First to go were the simple ones, “Hey babe, just checking in.” Hearing those only hurt a little bit, like a blister or a cold sore.
I could hit erase on those and not immediately burst into flames.

The next ones, the ones that were funny or touching, well, those hurt like I imagine a cracked skull or broken bones do. I would suffer physical pain for days after deleting those.

The last ones to get erased took me the longest to let go of because of their intimate nature.
They held my heart in chains and like a prisoner with Stockholm’s Syndrome I feared I’d die if I we parted.
I threw up for four straight hours the night I had the courage to hit ERASE on those.

Detox. It was Emotional Detox.

I’m not proud of the fact that it took me five years to become neutral. Yes, you heard me. Five fucking years to get that man out of my system. But I did.

Eventually, I healed and as part of that healing, I held a ceremony where I burned everything. It was my graduation ritual. Emotional rehabilitation complete.
As I watched all of the cards, love letters and yes, finally, the photos of us disintegrate into ash and swirl their way back into the aether, I felt free. He no longer held my heart prisoner. I was literally and symbolically free of him. Finally! And I have to say it felt fan-fucking-tastic!

So, you can imagine my reaction when a few weeks before Christmas, out of the blue, after thirty years —he reached out on Facebook for connection. And it triggered in me the most curious mixture of love and hate, attraction, and revulsion, curiosity, and fear.

Anyway, we agreed to talk. On the phone. Like for real.

He is fifty-two to my fifty-seven years and still in dire need of a “sensitivity chip”—just as I remembered.
He laughed hysterically when I said I was fifty-seven. “Yeah, sure you are” he guffawed, “You just keep telling that story.”
“I will, because it’s true,” I replied with a half-ass laugh, trying to keep things civil. Truth be told I wanted to reach though the phone and stab him in the neck with a fork. Come to think of it, it was not an unfamiliar impulse where he was concerned, but the rage he was still able to trigger shocked me.

Remember, we burned HOT.

After listening to him for a while, it was clear as he reminisced about our on-and-off two years together back in the eighties that:

1. He remembers that time fondly. Like, scary, made up memories of weird things that never happened, fondly. I do not. I was not my best self back then. Not even a little bit. Think, hot mess. That time turned into a catalyst for my own self-reflection and introspection. I’d jumped out of a fucking window overcome by lust so I’d say I was a girl desperately in need of some self-respect. It was not my proudest moment and as a result, I did decades of work on myself after that.

2. Our five-ish year age difference which I will admit felt much larger as a twenty-five-year-old woman with a twenty-year-old man (boy) had grown to a much broader span of his memory (hence the snide remarks). In HIS telling of our tale, the age difference has grown to decades. He is now Ben Affleck and I am Dame Helen Mirren, (who by-the-way admittedly looks better than I do in a bikini), but that is neither here nor there—the woman is seventy. 70!

3. His life has fallen to shit. He is re-connecting with me because he has become the Mayor of Martyr-ville. As he explained it, when his beloved father passed away, he gave up a thriving career and a life filled with fancy houses, cars, tons of money and super-models, (insert HUGE eye-roll), turned his back on love and ever having a family of his own, to live in his childhood bedroom taking care of his ailing mother and special needs sister. Oh come on! He’s NO saint. I can hear you, don’t turn on me now!

Why do guys do that? Why do they call you after they’ve fallen down the rabbit hole? I KNOW with every fiber of my being that if his life were going well he may have looked me up out of curiosity on Facebook (like we all do), but he would have NEVER in a million years have contacted me. I know that because I’m over fifty and life doesn’t work that way.

He sounded to me like someone who was in dire need of the three “C’s”. Camaraderie. Consolation. Contrition.
I don’t think I’m the right person for the job. I tried for about thirty minutes. Then I couldn’t wait to get off the phone and back to real life. You know, MY real life of fancy houses, cars, and super models.

For several days afterward I felt emotionally unstable. Like I’d been massaged by a plunger or punked.
I couldn’t tell if he felt bad about how things had ended and he most certainly didn’t call for my forgiveness.

You know why? Because he has no idea the suffering I put myself through. Did you catch that? I tortured myself. Everyday. All by myself.

So… why did he call me? Why was I the one he chose to soothe him? Honestly? I have no idea.

One of my friends who is familiar with our saga asked me if I somehow felt vindicated by his shitty life. You know, the best revenge is living well and all that. So…did I?… Maybe…and Yuck!
Had I learned nothing? Great. There go tens of thousands of dollars spent on three decades of self-help.

After feeling ashamed of myself, I have also started to figure out why I feel so out-of-sorts.

Perhaps because it was clear he still inhabited that wild, careless and dangerous place I had turned my back on years ago, and maybe I was afraid that hearing his voice would somehow lure me back there after being off of that sick, adrenalin high for thirty plus years. Perhaps.

More likely it’s because I have absolutely no desire to re-live the past. Even those lusty, tempestuous years with him. Like I said, those were not the good old days for me and no amount of reminiscing will make it so.

I have a distinct memory of something my mother said to me as I writhed on her bed in my broken-hearted agony—so here’s your quote. “He’ll come back. One way or another, they always come back.”

I lived breathlessly off the fumes of that hope for many years like a lost Mariners wife waits for the sea to return her beloved. Until eventually, facilitated by the passage of time, the entire situation was no longer a trigger for tears but an ancient, distant memory.

Then… he came back.